Easter Is About

I attended a Lenten celebration Wednesday night with my wife our four year old son and our two year old daughter. I arrived directly from work enjoyed dinner and fellowship with my family and a few other church members. My wife becoming ill left directly after dinner while I stayed for a hymn presentation by a local Christian college coral group.
In the midst of this hour of very nice music very well presented my son turned to me and said, “Daddy, they are singing bad songs.”
I said, “No they aren’t.”
He replied, “Yes, they are. They are singing Jesus dead. I don’t want to kill God.”
I replied, “Juanito, it is okay, God put himself in the ground, but he gets up again, that is what Easter is about.”
After about fifteen minutes Juan says, “So Jesus died, but he got back up.”
I said, “That is what Easter is about.”
Fifteen minutes later in the car on the way home my two year old says, “Daddy, Jesus died.”
I replied, “Yes.”
Jillian said, “And Jesus God got back up.”
I replied, “Yes”
She then said “Daddy, Bobe is died. She doesn’t have a house or eat or have a car. She is in the ground.”
I replied, “Yes, Bobe is dead.”
Jillian then said, “Will Jesus get her up, too?”
I replied, “Some day.”
Juan piped in, “Jesus will get Bobe up too.”
I replied, “We believe Jesus will get everyone up some day.”

And we were home.

I had a conversation when I was about ten years old with the then current pastor of the local Church of God of Prophecy of South Powell Wyoming.
He asked, “Don’t you believe in the resurrection?”
I said in all honesty, “Yes, I believe some day Jesus will come back and pull us all up out of the grave in whatever form and way he is going to do that (my brothers and i long speculated what was going to happen to cremated, organ transplants, etc.), but I also believe with just as much surety that in two thousand years there will be people here believing the same thing and saying ‘any moment’, just like we do.”

I still hold that pure dual surety in my heart. No wavering, no doubt, but not a great comfort to the feeble minded.

My children it is very apparent to me are in no way among that category.

I must be extra careful to fuel in them their love of learning, their inquisitive nature and their hope, but I must also be so very careful not to allow myself to somehow destroy their capacity for critical thought.

How does one combat zealousness?

How does one combat zealousness?
I have family members who are mentally mired in very negative renditions of American Pentecostalism and now a few have fallen into American Neo-Puritan groups. None of these groups can survive rational review from any credible historical source be it secular or Christian so why are they continuing to grow in membership and why do the members continue to push themselves farther into the muck the more ridiculously asinine and caustic the “doctrine” becomes? I am well aware of psychological explanations of learned helplessness and cognitive dissonance, but they just do not seem to go far enough to explain this particular form of zealous self debasement.

e.g. American Neo-Puritan groups

http://www.rbthieme.org/
http://www.joegriffin.org/
http://www.joegriffin.org/40procs/GraceDoctrineChurch40Procs.pdf
These folks claim to recognize no extra-Biblical experiences yet claim basic doctrines such as the Trinity, Creation, Biblical inerrancy, etc. all of which can only be drawn from biblical scripture if one weaves into their readings the writings and interpretations of historical characters within Christianity; none of whom is well represented prior to the second century AD.

I am oft met with resistance when I deem Thieme and his lot Neo–Puritans; yet, they say nothing that is short of regurgitated Puritan ‘Pentland Rebel’ doctrine.

e.g.

http://www.the-highway.com/Lordsprayer8_Traill.html
The Lord’s Prayer
SERMON VIII.
JOHN xvii. 24.
By: Robert Traill
Author:
Robert Traill (1642-1716): Friend of William Guthrie of Fenwick, attendant of James Guthrie of Stirling on the scaffold, son of the Greyfriars Church manse where the 1638 Covenant was signed, Scot ordained in England, exile in Holland, prisoner on the Bass Rock, scholar, preacher and saint — Robert Traill lived to span the ripest period of the Puritan age. Distinguished in the classes at Edinburgh University, Traill early felt the inner constraint to preach Christ. Too intimate an association with the younger John Welsh drew the swift displeasure of the civil arm upon him. Denounced as a ‘Pentland Rebel’ he fled to join the bright galaxy of British divines weathering the storm of Stuart Absolutism in the Low Countries (1667).
Traill’s literary output began there. As assistant to Nethenus, professor at Utrecht, he prepared Samuel Rutherford's Examination of Arminianism for the press. Back in London in 1692 he took up his pen, as Isaac Chancy (Owen’s successor) and the younger Thomas Goodwin were having to do, to defend the doctrine of Justification against the new Legalism. After serving Presbyterian charges in Kent and London he died at the age of 74.

Application excerpt:

The text we have before us, is about the beholding of Christ’s glory in heaven. I have been shewing you, that it is simply necessary to any right understanding of this great bliss, that a man do know, in his experience, somewhat of the beholding of Christ’s glory by faith in this life. Without this, no words that men can speak about this, can be understood by natural men 1 Cor. ii. 14. For the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. I may truly say, that no natural man doth, or can understand this verse. It is grievous and shameful, to see and read what blundering confused work many wise and learned men, but destitute of that mind and Spirit of Christ that led Paul in writing of it, make of this verse; when it is plain and bright, though deep, to every ordinary Christian. Now, the glory of Christ, and the beholding of it, are of the deepest of the deep things of God, ver. 10. How then can a natural man receive them, know them, or discern them? He is without that spiritual faculty by which only they can be rightly entertained. It is a dangerous and hurtful practice to the church of God, to the souls of men, and to the truths of God (and not a few are guilty of it, and many smart by it), for men to endeavour to bring down the deep mysteries of the gospel unto the sense and gust of a natural unrenewed man. It is sure, that they that teach, should teach plainly; and they that write, should make the vision plain, that he may run that readeth it, Hab. ii. 2. But they must still speak, or write, as the oracles of God, 1 Pet. iv. 11. and as stewards of the mysteries of God, 1 Cor. iv. 1. If, as it is undoubted, we cannot bring up the natural man’s understanding unto the deep things of God; we must not essay to bring down the depths of God unto their natural blindness. This were to degrade the things of the Spirit of God, and to delude the sinner. But let us study to declare God’s mind in his word, as plainly as we can, to natural men that hear us; and withal tell them, that the things themselves, of which we speak as plainly as we can, are beyond their reach; that they may know that the things of God are deep, and they themselves are blind, till the Spirit of Christ open the understanding, and open the scriptures unto them; as he did to his disciples, Luke xxiv. 32, 45.

New Tunnel

A mole digs through a field exploring everything from within the soil catching pray along the way and at surface entrances feeding its young crossing and recrossing its own tunnels and utilizing preexisting ones? If you are a Geek like me, you are a mole. Your field(s) is/are filled with Geek Tunnels that you often dig into sometimes you are so deep or away from the surface for so long the other animals actually worry as to your well being ... think “Wind in the Willows” meets the Borg … it isn't very creative, but it is my internal imagining of myself ... I wonder if that would make my totem a bionic mole?

Well after just three months, I am one week from ending one contract and starting a new one. The first change included a drop in commute from a 52 mile 1.5 hr run to a 25 mile 45 min run. The new gig is 1.6 miles from the house.
I do hope to make this a 3 to 5 year project. If all is as has been reported, I will be stepping back into the fast pace I am so used to, and also taking on management and mentoring responsibilities by title and job description not just as part of "all other tasks as assigned".

A lot of VB, VB.Net, ANSI SQL(MS T-SQL, Oracle PL\SQL) in client/server windows applications and web-enabled database application. I have 10 years in the field digging through the Geek Tunnels of Relational Database Management Systems (design, development, documentation, optimization, implementation, etc.), and building/generating/developing/debugging/optimizing the Applications and Reporting around them. I have just as many years in the field acting as a mentor and/or manager depending on the given job and an even more years experience in those two roles prior to my entering the technical field of database application development.

It will be a challenge to see if I can gradually lead the new troop towards C#, but until then I will have plenty to learn and do.

My Health Assessment

Waist-to-Hip Ratio
I measured 48" waist and 46" hips for a 1.04 Waist-to-Hip Ratio.
My weight is currently 257 lbs and hight 6'2"
From mybluehealth:

My BMI came in at 33.00
BMI Categories:

• Underweight BMI <18.5
• Overweight BMI 25-29.9
• Normal weight BMI 18.5-24.9
• Obese BMI 30 or greater

My Personal Health Assessment score came in above average for my peer group.

• My score: 160
• Average score: 142
• My peer group: Males 30-39 years

C# SQL RDMS App Dev

There is always so much to review ... what is really going to be useful in developing effective efficient products for your clients?

• Use Table-Valued Functions as Arrays in SQL Server
• Interview Questions: ASP.NET
• Dot Net Spider

Application Developer

I had a meeting this morning about a Lead Application Developer possition in which nearly all of the questions asked me are in the blog question answer post Interview Questions: ASP.NET posted on Tuesday, March 16, 2004 8:14 AM by Mark Wagner. While I believe I did a fairly good job answering the questions especially after reviewing Mark's posting, I do wish I had run into it prior to the discussion.
One thing that really has my goat, though is the question:
How many classes can a single .NET DLL contain?

The answer, "It can contain many classes.", just rubs me the wrong way.
Isn't there a specific determinate based on system memory, application structure, etc.?

Series: Baptismal Regeneration

The folks working on this wikipedia section have done a good job of trying to put together the many variations of opinions regarding Infant baptism and the sources used to establish the arguments those opinions are based on.
I hope I have time to validate and possibly add to the volume of knowledge presented.